Paper Dolls
by Harper008
Summary: Elliot still wears his wedding ring.


**Paper Dolls.**

She didn't like that it was polished and shiny when the light hit it.

She didn't like that it was a circle and every metaphor that she could relate to that.

If his marriage was like his ring, a circular shiny object, dull in the dark but bright in the light, then this could have just been a little bump in the loop, a dark spot hidden in the shadows and that meant that the only thing to come was the light.

Olivia Benson did not want to feel like he should take it off for her. She wanted to believe that he should take it off for himself because she had left him and his ring, in all it's polished glory, reminded him of the vows that had been broken.

He could feel it on his skin, and that bothered her. It bothered her that he could feel his promise to Kathy resting on his fingers, cool against his warm hands, and she wanted to believe that that didn't make her nauseous - that his inability to move on and past this made her feel more stuck than she did when he was still living in the house with his paper-doll family, cardboard cutouts of perfection.

"You want a beer?" He called to her from his kitchen with flowers on the walls and pictures of his dismembered family on the fridge.

This was not his home; this was his shelter. He did not make it feel like home because it could never be. Home required some sort of resignation on his part, to make this his home, separate from those that used to be his definition of such, that made him resign to the fact that he would never be going back.

"It's nice," Olivia lied. He could feel her false words from the other room, and he wanted to hide the dull pale his eyes had assumed.

A father without a family, a husband without a wife.

An empty shell of a person was what Elliot Stabler was existing as; a paper doll with changing clothes and faces and costumes – all only a thin slice of paper to hide behind.

Olivia did not want to feel like she could save him.

She did not want to feel like she could make him forget and make this better because his eyes were lighter and his hands were colder and she felt him falling away now, when there was the opportunity to grow closer, now she felt his fingers slide from hers and his smile drag slowly away and she wanted to not feel her entire body ache for him like it was.

She was embarrassed because she would play this game with him.

Play paper dolls, change when he wanted her, fold down the flaps of her uniform for the day and settle into whatever he needed of her when he needed it.

She wanted him to take off his ring, take off that visible promise to someone else.

Paper dolls didn't need such things.

"You've been quiet." He reached for her hand and she felt like she was bleeding, like she had thousands of little paper cuts about her now and she was bleeding her feelings from her, her crimson blood staining him.

She was still whole though, when he touched her she didn't actually bleed and she felt like that was worse – to remain whole while he was falling apart, tearing at the seams.

She wanted to save him.

She did not want to feel as if she could make this all better because she could not even meet his eyes, strangers eyes in Elliot's body and she wondered if, because his eyes were different, if he was even the same person.

His eyes were his soul, and she was lost now, dark in a room with a foreign blue light.

Olivia wanted him to feel how scared she was that him trying to find his lost family would make her lose him.

Elliot wanted Olivia to know that she was his compass, because he could feel her break under his touch.

Blood or not, he knew that she was bleeding.

"It's been a long day," Olivia let out a sigh and pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes.

Elliot's hand burned from where he had been touching her.

Tonite he was lost between where he thought he should be and where he felt he should be and he wondered if his heart and brain were at all connected, or if they would forever be separate.

"You did what you could," Elliot tried to assure her.

Olivia didn't want to talk about work and the little boy they'd found and the rapist and murderer they hadn't. She didn't want that to be their life because she wanted to still hold on to hope that they had something left.

"Not tonite." She shook her head and looked into him, and he could feel it. He could feel her eyes peel him open and tear him apart and he realized then that his heart would never connect with his mind.

The wiring was all wrong and he was connected to Olivia, his mind wired to her heart and his heart wired to her mind and he wanted to think but he could only hear his heart beating in his ears and he wanted her to leave because he could not get his family back with Olivia Benson standing before him, her chocolate eyes fading at a speed unable to be calculated.

"You can talk to me, you know." When she finished she cleared her throat, and she didn't see Elliot turn away, but she felt him remove his broken eyes from her.

She couldn't tell if that hurt more than him looking at her.

"I'm fine," His voice was thick and his eyes were thin and his heart was so loud that it was drowning out the words Olivia said next, he couldn't hear them and he couldn't look at her to read her lips and he couldn't let himself fall into her because he had to be a father and a husband and he needed his family to be those things.

He was starting to not be able to catch his breath because he was starting to understand that he could not love Olivia without being someone else's husband and someone else's father and he knew that it was because that gave him a safe distance to stay away from her; from the intensity of what she silently spoke to him.

"Elliot," She reached for his hand and brought it up so that it was between their faces. "Don't lie to me, El. You're still married to her, maybe not legally, but you're still promising yourself to her ghost."

Elliot was ashamed to be in love with a memory.

"It won't come off," he lied, and Olivia felt herself burn with desire for him. She wanted him to need her as much as he needed the false promise of the tiny piece of metal.

She bit down on her bottom lip as she slid the ring from below Elliot's knuckle, stopping just below his nail and catching his eyes with her own.

She felt like she was standing beneath a star-filled sky, like his eyes were stars and hers were a net and the stars were falling and she was trying to catch them without being burned by their fire.

"Lie to me again," she growled with emotion.

"You don't know what this feels like," Elliot pulled his hand from hers, his ring dropping to the ground, and the sound it made when it hit the wood floors was deafening. He put his bare hand to his chest, over where his heart should be, and clenched his jaw, shaking his head. "You have no idea what this feels like."

"Because you won't let me." Olivia let her words dangle between them and she allowed him to interpret them however he would like.

In the next moment she was in his hands, they were grasping at her arms and he pushed her to the wall, pushed her until she felt the paint and the plaster and the support, pushed her until she was molding into this hollowed out representation of Elliot's failure.

He pressed his lips to hers, tight and taught and he shoved his tongue through her lips until she could taste him and want him and need him, until she stopped breathing and started inhaling him and gluttonously grabbing for every dream she had ever had.

He kissed her until the bonds between them broke from being so stretched and strong and used and he felt her bleed into him and he felt her on him, touching him and being with him and needing him.

And then he stepped back and looked her over slowly, his lip was bleeding from where she had bit him, and he observed this little paper doll, torn and bent and ready for a shiny new outfit.

Elliot Stabler could not love her unless he was grounded by something else, because he did not believe in fairy tales.

He bent down and picked up his fallen ring, and then slipped it onto his finger before walking away.

The paper doll was torn into millions of pieces, her eyes blinded as his ring caught the light.

And she now knew exactly how he felt.

-

finished.


End file.
